The toilet is one of the key factors in the development of civilization? This popular science article has a bit of "flavor"

A healthy person produces about 0.225 kg of feces every day. Multiply that by the global population. All that feces has to go somewhere. The toilet has inevitably become an important "interface" between you and society. The energy for flushing the toilet comes from gravity, which is also the mysterious force that keeps the universe running. The toilet is likely to be one of the key factors in the development of civilization.

It is reported that the oldest toilet should be located in a small village in the northernmost part of Scotland. It was there in 3000 BC, which is 5000 years old. There are several houses there, each with a small door in the corner, a small compartment inside, and a hole in the ground, where excrement is discharged and concentrated into the sea.

Later, the development of sanitation facilities in ancient Rome began to be amazing. Middle-class Romans could connect their private toilets at home to the public sewer system. Romans who did not have toilets at home went out to solve the problem together. In 315 AD, there were 144 public toilets in Rome, which had public sit-down toilets, and water flowed through the grooves below to flush away excrement. It seems that people at that time had a different view of public toilets than modern people. Toilets, like public bathrooms, became social occasions, where people sat next to each other and talked while using the toilet. At the peak of the empire, a 420-kilometer-long aqueduct delivered a large amount of water to every corner of the imperial capital. Unfortunately, the Roman Empire and Roman toilets have also been washed away by the water of time.

It was as if humans had regressed to a more primitive age, seemingly forgetting that there had ever been a clean flush toilet, and 1,000 years had passed. It wasn't until the late 16th century, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, that anyone thought to properly clean it up. Her godson, Sir John Harrington, published a book in 1596 that was a manual on how to build your own flush toilet.

This is a large wooden commode that you can sit on. When you are done, you pull the handle and water flows from the water tank at the back into the container below, and then discharges it into the garden through a pipe. It sounds good, but this toilet did not become popular because the pipe under the seat to discharge excrement is straight, and the stench will continue to flow into the house, and no one wants to stay in it. So, for the next 200 years, everyone either dug a manure pit in the backyard or relieved themselves in a chamber pot at night and threw it out the window at dawn...

It was not until 1775 that Alexander Cumming, a London watchmaker, invented the great S-trap. The S-trap always ensures that some water does not flow out directly, and this water is responsible for isolating the odor in the toilet and pipes. Harrington's water tank, urinal, and the watchmaker's trap finally gave birth to the great modern toilet. However, there is still a very important element missing from a clean and hygienic toilet, that is, a sewer.

Because flush toilets were quite rare in those days, and most houses did not have running water, there was no perfect sewer system. No matter how advanced the toilet was, it could only allow feces to flow out and penetrate into the soil. If you had a toilet at home and it was not far from your well, then the problem would be troublesome. You would really drink your feces from the day before. Feces is a dangerous substance, full of various bacteria, which is why feces has a "special" smell. Most of these bacteria are harmless to the human body and spend their entire lives processing food in the human large intestine. But some bacteria are deadly enough. If you ingest those bacteria, once they enter your stomach, you will get seriously ill.

The two major diseases related to human excrement in history are cholera and typhoid. There was a period of time in London, Paris, and New York when children often died. At that time, people did not know that bacteria were spread through drinking water contaminated by filth. From 1831 to 1832, in just two years, 50,000 people died of cholera in Britain, and 18,000 people died in Paris in one summer.

The Public Health Act of 1848 required every household to install a flush toilet. This act may have ultimately led to the Great Stink of 1858. The summer of that year was hot and long, and all the filth was trapped in the river, emitting an unbearable stench on these muddy, sloping banks.

Fortunately, these odors and germs helped to create modern sewers. London, New York, and other cities around the world invested heavily in state-of-the-art public sewer lines to keep waste and odors out of the city. These sewers were so good that many of them from the early 19th century are still in use today.

After thousands of years, humans finally no longer have to worry about poop.